19th Century England as Depicted in North and South, The Outcast and A Living Wage for Factory Girls at Crewe

During the mid-nineteenth century, entrepreneurial textile company owners wanted to find a way to maximize profit while minimizing costs, and due to the Rhode Island system, and having to pay every working man a living wage, too much money was being wasted in paying the workers and it drove the cost of their products to go up. However, there was no law in place that said the owners of the factories must pay women a living wage, so textile companies started to recruit women farmworkers to leave the farm and come work in their factories. attempted to regulate the lives of their female workers by making them live by strict rule sets that dictated what they could or could not do throughout their day to day lives while working at the factories.

The theme for this week is gender roles in Victorian Britain before and after 1860. The roles of a male and female starting from a child to an adult varied between the two. Men were generally independent while women were dependent, which affected their progression in society. It wasn’t until the end of the nineteenth century were women able to have more of an education and the right to divorce However, during the Victorian period men dominated the workforce and politics. Though the working class, middle class, and upper class experience different levels of accepting norms.

Women in the 1800s were stereotyped and confined to specific roles in society, however it all changed. The 1800s in Victorian England, created an environment, which encouraged stereotypes, aimed at women in which they were required to stay at home and be ‘The Angels of the House.’ Women were not only constricted to very narrow gender roles where they are expected to be mothers, pure, naïve and dependant on their husbands. Jobs such as teaching and nursing were seen as women jobs only and these were the only jobs women should do. However, the Industrial Revolution helped open a new era for women in society and this allowed women to feel the need to stand up for their rights and challenge the stereotypes of the society. Lucy Westenra is a typical young, beautiful girl whose main aim is to marry and do what is accepted in society as a wife. She is seen as a marginal figure whose

A bunch of research has shed light on how early some children during this time period started working in the Victorian Era.  Some children started working as early as a mere eight and a half years old to twelve years old, working in factories, repairing machine equipment that was tedious or required small hands to fix, cleaning factory floors or chimneys or working in mines (Humphries 1).  The machines that children were working on were dangerous and often resulted in injury due to no safety features on them.  The kids working on them had to be careful or they could very well lose a finger or hand, which would lead to them losing their job (Cunnington).

The Factory Act, 1833 was an attempt to set up a normal working day in

Women were seen as economically incompetent because only men in the middle class were allowed to work and support their family. Women were excluded from the professions, except for writing and teaching. The acceptable occupations in the 19th century were factory labor or domestic work. Society used to think that a woman was just able to serve her husband. Eventually, by the 20th century the great majority of women who were employed in clerical positions, factory work, retail sales, and service jobs. Women in factories often work as machine operators, assemblers, and inspectors. Many women worked as waitresses, cooks, hospital attendants, cleaning women, and hairdressers, secretaries, and bookkeepers. However, they were paid less than men.

Child Labor during the Industrial Revolution: Great Britain The Economic Impacts Throughout the Industrial Revolution, children played a pivotal part in economic growth of England, but they also played a pivotal part in the future of their ancestor’s wiliness to work. As history can tell us, in today’s society, both women and men are present in the work force.

In present day America, there is no societal statement that is proclaimed more often than "all people are created equal." However, this value is in complete contradiction to the class oriented views of the 19th century. The 19th century was most known for society's oppression towards the lower class and especially women. Jane Eyre, an award winning novel, depicts and vividly describes these stereotypical beliefs that the people of this time withheld. All these beliefs are told and persevered through one character, Jane Eyre. Eyre’s character and events throughout the story reveal the oppression towards women and the diffident feelings that the lower class in the 19th century endured.

Victorian England was a period where women faced enormous financial uncertainty and social vulnerability. Due to a prevailing social construct of gender and gender roles, women of the time were perceived as the weaker sex thus belonged to the domestic sphere. As a result of this, there were very few prospects for a single woman with regards to improving her socioeconomic status other than through marriage. Jane Austen’s Emma and Anne Bronte’s The Tenant of Wildfell Hall, novels written in 19th century England, both provide a lens through which the challenges of young women of the time can be observed and analyzed. Emma portrays a tenacious heroine, who is strong, intelligent and confident

Gaskell represents the older characters negatively as to criticise the antiquated viewpoint that they seem to represent, which generally go against her romantic ideals and sympathies with the working class. To contrast the older ideas, she uses the personal growth in Margaret and occasionally Thornton in their changing views of Milton, as when Margaret comes to dread the stagnant lifestyle found south and appreciate the industrious nature of those in Milton, and likewise Thornton’s final epiphany about the tranquility of the south when he visits at the end of the movie. Her support of more modern ideals is also shown in the portrayal of Thornton as a diligent and noble man who has worked to create his wealth, showing her inclination to support

Mary Barton is the first novel written by author Elizabeth Gaskell, which was published in 1848. The novel explores the struggles of the working-class in Manchester, England during the Victorian Era industrial revolution. Gaskell portrays a story that dives into socioeconomic inequality between aristocratic business owners and employees, while balancing a sub-plot love story between its characters. Mary Barton is full of modern day liberal overtones and fuels an argument for redistribution of wealth, as this is not a discussion of politics it’s important to highlight the ideological resemblance between Gaskell and modern theorists. This paper will revolve around the response to three questions about the novel; why did Gaskell write this book, drug addiction during Victorian times, and the impact of Mrs. Barton’s death on John’s political views.

Throughout the course of history, social hierarchies have existed across the globe, spanning from prince to pauper or business tycoon to lowly scrivener. Authors, in turn, have written works regarding social class, often examining the negative effects of societal structure on personal growth. Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre takes place in Victorian England, in the age of industry and genesis of industrial capitalism. The novel’s protagonist, Jane, first lives a life of neglect, then a life in poverty, and eventually finds her happy ending. Through Jane’s personal experiences and interactions with fellow characters, Brontë analyzes the effects of social class. Professor Chris Vanden Bossche’s article analysis “What Did ‘Jane Eyre’ Do? Ideology, Agency, Class and the Novel” examines social inclusion and monetary pressures placed on the central characters during this pivotal era of English history. Through the Marxist lens, Jane Eyre can be understood in terms of complexity and character motives. Vanden Bossche effectively argues that external forces, like money and people, both motivate and repress Jane into choosing her own path. Thus, a more developed explanation is made for Jane’s various behaviors regarding social inclusion and societal rebellion.

In Great Britain during the nineteenth century, women experienced less rights in many aspects of their daily lives when compared to twenty-first century. Women lived a stricter lifestyle and men decided on many decisions in a women’s life. During the nineteenth century in Europe, women and men had an expectation to live on opposite spheres of society. Men were familiarized with living a public life, whether it was working in a factory or socializing with like-minded men in public places, like clubs, meetings, or bars. On the contrary, women had the expectation to live their lives largely at home, which included cooking, cleaning, and child rearing. Free time for women was not supposed to be spent socializing but doing other things related to

Lenore Davidoff is less interested in criticizing political theory than in showing how historians and others must look carefully at the ragged edges of the public, the semi-public, and the private spheres to understand how Victorian women and men of a variety of social classes came to define others and themselves in terms of rationality, individuality, the market, and property. Temporal and contested as these boundaries were, however,

In Victorian Britain, monumental changes were occurring in regards to class structure and gender ideals due to social and economic changes sparked by the Industrial Revolution. These changes caused a new image of masculinity to emerge. The concept of masculinity came to embody a new ideal, self-made man, measured by advances based on personal success rather than birthright(M19). It was expected that men were to exude manly toughness and independent spirit while providing the financial support and leadership for the household(m19). Beyond these basic characteristics, Elizabeth Gaskell’s construction of the ideal man incorporates a fusion of gender traits as strengths of masculinity, notably her emphasis on “manly nurturance” and “tenderness” as seen in her novel Mary Barton(wcm334). While the evolving social structure of 19th century Britain was a cause for the increasing emphasis on manliness, it was also the source of challenges faced by working class men as they struggled to achieve and maintain this new sense of masculinity. By analyzing Gaskell’s Mary Barton and additional texts from the period, supplemented by contemporary analysis of the concept of masculinity, this paper provides insight into the constructions of masculinity in working class men of Victorian society and discusses the struggles workers faced as they strove to achieve manhood amidst the changing social climate.